Allah: Arabic word for "the Lord." In Muslim theology,
the same God whom Christians and Jews worship (under the name Jehovah/Yahweh).
Allah has 99 attributes, or descriptive names, such as "the Compassionate"
and "the Merciful."

bid'a: "innovation," used to refer to any new idea contrary to
the Shari'ah.

Bismillah (also Basmalah): the phrase with which Muslims
bless a work about to be undertaken: "In the name of Allah, the Merciful,
the Compassionate." All surahs of the Qur'an except the first one begin
with this phrase. In Arabic:
It can be found many places, and is incorporated into much Muslim art.
(Offsite examples
at Islam101.com)

buraq: the mythical beast upon whom Muhammad made his trip to
Heaven. (Image)

Dar al-Islam: the "house of Islam," that is, all the territory
that is subject to Muslim rule.

Dar al-Harb: the "house of war," that is, territory not under
Muslim rule.

devshirme: A tax in children levied for the Ottoman army. See
janissaries.

dhimmi: "protected people," followers of a tolerated religion
under Islam. Normally, dhimmi are allowed to practice their religion in
private but not to seek converts. The dhimmah (protection) was established
under the caliph Umar through the Pact of Umar.

Fatimids: Sevener Shi'ite dynasty that controlled Egypt and much
of the Middle East from 909 to 1171, named according to their claimed descent
from the Prophet's daughter Fatimah. (map)

fatwa: the decision of a judge or mufti. A fatwa is issued
in a case of conscience and should be based in the Shari'ah.

fez: a hat made of red felt used in the nineteenth century by
"modernist" Ottomans instead of a turban.

fiqh: Muslim jurisprudence; the interpretation of the Shari'ah.

fitnah: "time of trial" or "tribulation." Used to describe the
difficulties within the Ummah after the death of Muhammad. The first fitnah
is 656-61; the second 680-692; the third 744-750. (see timeline)

ghazi: a holy warrior participating in jihad. In Ottoman history,
the term applied to traditional nomadic Turks.

Gospels: the New Testament books of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John,
which provide the story of the life of Jesus.
Return to top

H

hadith (pl. ahadith): an oral tradition of the Prophet,
usually a story or anecdote about his reponse to a situation. A hadith
is considered authoritative based on its original source; those attributed
to A'ishah are among the most authoritative. The term for the transmitters
of hadith is isnad or sanad. Ahadith provide the Sunnah or "way" of the
prophet.

Hafsa: wife of Muhammad, daughter of the caliph Umar. According
to tradition, she is the one who kept the authoritative copy of the Qur'an
after Muhammad's death. (see The
Prophet's Family)

hajj: the annual pilgrimage to Mecca, which takes place in the
twelfth month of the Muslim lunar year. The fifth
pillar of Islam; every able-bodied Muslim must perform it once in a
lifetime if possible. A person who has made the pilgrimage is called a
hajji.

halal: something that is approved as religiously proper for a
Muslim.

Hanifite school: one of the four Sunni schools of Muslim jurisprudence,
beginning with Abu-Hanifah (699-767 CE)

Hanbalite school: one of the four Sunni schools of Muslim jurisprudence,
beginning with Ahmad ibn-Hanbal (780-855 CE)

Hashimids: the family of Muhammad, usually divided between Abbasids
(descendants of Abbas) and Alids (descendants of Ali). (See The
Prophet's Family)

haram: something that is forbidden to a Muslim, such as eating pork.
(More serious than makruh).

harem: a Turkish word designating the women's quarters of a household,
into which male guests may not go.In India a similar arrangement is called
a zenanah.

Hellenism: term used to describe the spread of Greek ("Hellenic")
culture under Alexander the Great.

heresy: an unorthodox religious belief held deliberately and with knowledge
of its unorthodoxy. A Christian term which westerners sometimes use to discuss
different forms of disagreement within Islam.

hijab: modest dress, for both men and women, although the emphasis
is usually on the female. What "hijab" actually means varies widely
from place to place.

Hijaz: the western side of the Saudi Arabian peninsula, containing
Mecca and Medina. (See map)

hijra (also hegira): the flight of Muhammad from Mecca
to Yathrib (later Medina) in 622. The beginning of the Muslim calendar;
years are designated AH.

ijma': in Muslim jurisprudence, "consensus" or "agreement" related
to interpretation of the Shari'ah.

ijtihad: "personal judgment" applied to the Shari'ah.

imam: a religious leader. In Sunni Islam, the person who leads
prayers in the mosque. In Shi'ite Islam, the direct-line successor to Muhammad
via his daughter Fatima and son-in-law Ali (in which case it is capitalized).
(see Shi'ism)

jahiliyyah: the "time of ignorance." Used to refer to the period
before Muhammad in Arab Bedouin history.

Janissaries: from Turkish "yeni cheri," "new soldiers." This
word refers to the slave soldiers of the Ottoman Empire between 1389 and
1826. Male children were recruited via the devshirme, a tax in children
levied upon non-Muslim communities, and raised as professional soldiers.
The corps began to decline in the 16th century and by 1600 was a bastion
of hereditary privilege and intrigue. The janissary corps was forcibly
disbanded in 1826 by the Ottoman sultan Mehmed II.

jihad: sometimes called the "sixth pillar
of Islam," this word has two meanings:
1. The "greater jihad" is "striving" of any kind, particularly moral;
the struggle to be a better person, a better Muslim, the struggle against
drugs, against immorality, against infidelity, etc.
2. Holy war in agreement with the Shari'ah: only undertaken when the
faith is threatened and at the approval of a religious authority such as
a mullah, though this is a difficult distinction (the "lesser jihad").

madrasa: a school or college, often founded through a waqf, designed
to provide religious and legal education. Early madrasas were based on
the combination of a mosque and a dormitory for students (ca. 1090 CE).

Mahdi: the "rightly guided one" who will usher in the Day of
Judgment. For Sunni Muslims, the mahdi will follow the return of Jesus
and usher in a period of peace before the Last Judgment; for Twelver Shi'ite
Muslims, the mahdi is the Twelfth Imam.

makruh: something that Islam strongly discourages, but does not forbid.

Malikites: One of the four Sunni schools of Muslim jurisprudence,
beginning with Malik ibn-Anas (713-795).

Mamluk: a term used for professional slave soldiers in the Abbasid
and Seljuq era, later adopted for the professional Turkish warrior class
in Egypt during the Mamluk period. The Mamluk sultanate, started by Baybars
(1260-1277) was distinguished from other sultanates by an almost total
lack of family continuity between the sultans.

mawla (pl. mawali): in early Umayyad times, a word used
to refer to non-Arab converts to Islam, adopted into Arab tribes.

mihrab: a small cavity in the wall of a mosque that shows worshippers
what direction to face during prayer.

millet: name used to refer to ethnic groups under the Ottomans.
The main millets of the late Ottoman period were Turkish Muslim, Jewish
and Christian. Non-Muslim millets paid the devshirme.

mosque (masjid): any place of Muslim worship. A jami-masjid
or Friday Mosque is a major mosque where weekly prayer services are performed
and a sermon or khutbah is given.

Muezzin: the person who announces the daily prayers from the
minaret (tower) of a mosque.

Muhammad: the last prophet of Islam, often called the "Seal of
the Prophets." God revealed the Qur'an to Muhammad starting in the year
610 CE. When Muslims write the Prophet's name, they usually include the
figure , or the abbreviation
(pbuh) or (saas), meaning "Peace be upon him."

mufti: an expert in the Shari'ah who gives legal judgments called
fatwas.
Usually one mufti in a given geographic area is called the Grand Mufti.

Mu'tazilites: a ninth-century minority group who believed in
the free will of the individual and rejected the infallibility and eternal,
uncreated status of the Qur'an. Although one Abbasid caliph supported this
point of view, the opposite view, that of the Asharites, prevailed.

Muslim: "one who submits" to God. A follower of Islam.

mysticism: direct communion with the divine through behavioral
practice

Original Sin: term for the sin committed by Adam and Eve when
they ate the apple from the Tree of Knowledge. Traditions about this sin
vary in Christianity, Judaism and Islam and between different sects within
the faiths.

Ottomans: the Turkish dynasty descending from Osman (1258-1326)
which came to power in Anatolia in the fourteenth century and continued
to rule a large territory until the 1920s. (See offsite: the
Ottomans)

Patriarch: title given to the bishops of Constantinople,
Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem in the Eastern (Greek) Orthodox church,
who have power over other bishops; also the title given to the head of
Orthodox churches.

Pact of Umar: agreement which formed the dhimma, or protection,
for non-Muslims under the early Ummah. (See offsite: Pact
of Umar)

Pan-Arabism: theory in the brotherhood of all Arabs under Islam,
growing out of early twentieth-century Arab nationalism.

People of the Book (ahl al-Kitab): people with Scriptures; that
is, Jews and Christians, to Muslims.

qibla: the part of the wall in a mosque that faces Mecca and
contains the mihrab.

qiyas: "analogy" in Muslim jurisprudence; in other words, using
analogy to problems discussed in hadith to make legal decisions

Qur'an (also Koran): "the recitation," the holy book of
Islam. In Islamic theology, the author of the Qur'an is God (not Muhammad)
and contains the exact words given to Muhammad between 610 and 632 CE.
For this reason, translations of the Qur'an into any other language are
called "interpretations" or "explanations" of the Qur'an.

Quraysh: the Arab tribe to which Muhammad and his clan, the Banu
Hashim, belonged.

Safavids: Term used for the Shi'ite shahs of Iran, beginning
with Isma'il (1501-1524) and lasting until 1721.

salat: the second pillar
of Islam, ritual prayer, performed five times daily.

Shafiites: One of the four schools of Sunni Muslim jurisprudence,
beginning with Muhammad ibn-Idris, 'al-Shafi' (767-820).

Shahadah: the first pillar
of Islam, the statement "There is no god but God, and Muhammad is his
prophet."

Shajar ad-Dur: "Tree of Pearls," a slave woman originally sent
as a gift to the Ayyubid sultan, controlled the Ayyubid sultanate from
May to July of 1250, until she was forced to marry a Mamluk chieftain.
In 1260 she and her husband were murdered and Baybars (1260-1277) became
the first Mamluk sultan of Egypt.

Shari'ah: Muslim sacred law, or the rules that guide a Muslim's
life. These rules are determined through fiqh, based on
the Qur'an and the sunnah, and (in Sunni Islam) ijma and
qiyas.

shaykh (also sheikh, sheik): a title applied to the patriarch
of a Muslim family group; also used as a term of respect for religious
leaders and elders.

sipahi: a soldier. In the Ottoman empire, used to refer to calvary
soldiers as opposed to janissaries. In India, "sepoy."

Sufi: a Muslim mystic, called so for the suf or wool robe
usually worn by devotees. Sufis commonly practice ascetic abstinence and
believe in a mystical relationship with the divine. There are many orders,
or tariqas, of Sufis. Some live in a self-contained community called
a ribat. The words "fakir" (Arabic) and "dervish" (Persian) are
sometimes used to refer to Sufis. (Links
for Sufism)

Sultan: Turkish title originally used to distinguish a military
leader from the caliph; later, the title used for any Muslim ruler.

sunnah: custom as embodied in hadith literature

Sunni: "people of the sunnah," in other words, the majority of
Muslims, who accept the descent of the caliphate from Ali (d. 661 CE) to
Mu'awiyah, governor of Syria.

syncretism: the combination of different beliefs or practices
by cultures when they interact with one another.

Tanzimat: series of reforms in the Ottoman Empire promulgated
between 1845 and 1876. They culminated in the promulgation of an Ottoman
Constitution in 1876, but Sultan Abdulhamid II declared the Constitution
invalid two years later.

tariqah: the mystical "way" of the Sufis; a word used to refer
to any of the Sufi orders.

Umar: the second caliph of the Rashidun, caliph 634-644. According
to tradition, he is responsible for the Pact of Umar.(See
The
Prophet's Family)

ummah: "community" or "nation," a word used to refer to the community
of believers founded by Muhammad.

Umayyads: line of caliphs starting with Mu'awiyah (661-680) and
lasting until 750.

Uthman: the third caliph of the Rashidun, 644-656, assassinated
in 656. According to tradition, he is responsible for the standardization
of the Qur'an into one authoritative version. (see The
Prophet's Family)Return to top

waqf: a pious foundation or endowment provided for a school,
a hospital, or a mosque.

wali: 1. a "friend" of God, used to refer to a Muslim saint,
frequently a Sufi. The tombs of such saints are often places of pilgrimage.
Also used to refer to the legal guardian of a minor.
2. the title given to an Ottoman governor of a province such
as Egypt.

wazir (also vizier): an officer, similar to a Prime Minister,
who administered a kingdom on behalf of a ruler. Some administrations had
only one wazir at a time, while others had several at once.
Return to top

Y

Yathrib: the city in the Hijaz to which Muhammad fled in 622
during the hijra. Later named Medina, or al-Madina, "the city (of the Prophet)."

zakat: the third pillar
of Islam, a voluntary tithe on property paid by a wealthy Muslim for
the support of the poor.

Zionism: philosophy of Theodor Herzl, late nineteenth-century
German Jewish author of Der Judenstaat (1896). Herzl theorized that
growing hatred of Jews in Europe and the slow assimilation of Jewish culture
into wider European culture could only be stopped by the establishment
of a Jewish homeland.